Fuels that are gaseous at standard ambient temperature and pressure (“gas fuels”) may comprise, for example, methane, ethane, propane, butane, pentane, and mixtures of two or more of these hydrocarbons. Gas fuels may be compressed to form a fluid in the form of liquefied gas fuel. For example, butane, propane, and fuels containing mixtures of these hydrocarbons may be sold as liquefied petroleum gas or liquid propane gas, either of which may be abbreviated as LPG. A liquefied gas fuel or other fluid may be stored in a vessel, examples of which include but are not limited to pressure vessels in the form of cylinders and tanks including LPG bulk storage vessels (“LPG bullet tanks”), and liquefied natural gas storage vessels. A vessel is a type of asset.
When a vessel is installed in the field, it is useful for a truck-based gas delivery business (or other truck-based fluid delivery business) to be able to remotely monitor the quantity of fluid in the vessel. Vessel fluid quantity information may assist a fluid supplier to avoid fluid “run-outs” i.e. letting the fluid quantity fall so low that the customer runs out of fluid. Fluid run-outs are very annoying for customers, and may even prompt them to switch to a different fluid supplier. Fluid quantity information also helps fluid suppliers to avoid delivering fluid before a vessel needs refilling. Delivering fluid before fluid quantities reach the re-fill quantity may result in trucks making more deliveries than necessary, which may waste both labour and truck fuel, and forces fluid suppliers to operate a larger truck fleet than necessary. Fluid delivery businesses, for example LPG gas delivery businesses, may have tens or hundreds of thousands of customers, so the cost of unnecessary deliveries can be significant for them.
A vessel may be fitted with a telemetry-enabled telemetric device capable of transmitting the fluid quantity information, which may be, for example, the output of a fluid quantity gauge. An example of a fluid quantity gauge is a float gauge located inside a LPG pressure vessel. The information transmitted by a telemetry-enabled telemetric device, for example, fluid quantity information, status reports, and alerts, is typically stored in an electronic database record. It may be necessary to link, relate, or “associate” the transmitted information with one or more other database records, for example a database record containing information about the vessel or a database record containing customer billing information. This association enables a delivery to be made on time to the correct vessel, and also enables the correct customer to be billed for that delivery.
In a computer database, the association can be implemented by manually associating an identifier from each of the two records, which allows the other information in those records to be associated (joined) in a relational database, for example. Therefore, a telemetry-enabled telemetric device identifier for the telemetric device may be associated in a computer database with a vessel identifier. The identifiers generally comprise a sequence of symbols that are each an alphanumeric symbol, and may be in the form of a serial code. Each vessel identifier for a collection of vessels may be unique, and each device identifier for a collection of devices may be unique. The identifiers may be printed on labels fixed to the telemetry-enabled telemetric device and vessels, for example. The vessel identifier for the gas vessel may comprise information that indicates a delivery point for gas deliveries.
Conventionally, a manual process is used to associate the telemetry-enabled telemetric device identifier with the vessel identifier. An installer may communicate by telephone the device identifier and vessel identifier to a person at the truck-based delivery company's office or depot.
The person manually enters the telemetry-enabled telemetric device identifier and vessel identifier into a database to make the association. Manual association of identifiers may be delayed or forgotten by the person doing it, which may delay the commissioning or billing related to the vessel and/or its fluid contents.
Further, there are a number of opportunities for human errors to occur when manually associating identifiers, including but not limited to:                The telemetry-enabled telemetric device identifier may be misread or confused with other markings on the telemetry-enable device identifier, e.g. model number, asset tag.        The telemetry-enabled telemetric monitoring device identifier may be recorded incorrectly in the database.        An incorrect vessel identifier may be associated in the computer database with the telemetry-enabled telemetric monitoring device identifier, which may lead to incorrect customer being billed.        Either an invalid vessel identifier or an invalid telemetry-enabled telemetric device identifier may be used, which may lead to no customer being billed at all.        When a telemetry-enabled telemetric monitoring device identifier is pre-associated with the vessel identifier, an installer carrying multiple devices may install a telemetry-enabled telemetric device on the wrong vessel.        
An incorrect association of identifiers may be a serious issue for suppliers and consumers of delivered fluids, for example LPG gas and oil. It may result in incorrect fluid quantity information for a vessel, which may cause run-outs. It may also cause the wrong consumers being billed for gas/oil usage.
Mistakes may inconvenience consumers, which may cause them to switch to another supplier, which is a loss of revenue for the supplier. Further, each incorrect device-to-vessel or other type of asset association needs to be investigated and rectified by the supplier (which may require a visit to the telemetric device in the field) which wastes time and money. Even a small number of incorrect device-to-vessel associations may be costly for a supplier. An error rate of only 1% in a roll-out of 50,000 telemetric monitoring devices will result in 500 incorrect device-to-vessel associations, which is a major source of expense to a supplier.